BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Children Of Fame, Sharing A Cesspool

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Published: February 22, 2005

As readers of Bruce Wagner's earlier novels well know, his Hollywood is an American Babylon, a stinking, sin-riddled cesspool, an unholy magnet for narcissists, egomaniacs, exhibitionists, climbers, stalkers, sycophants, control freaks, fame addicts, celebrity codependents, spiritual hucksters and a mad bevy of predators eager to exploit others' dreams, neuroses and vulnerabilities. The perfect backdrop, in short, for Mr. Wagner's caustic satire and sad-funny-scabrous meditations on vanity, mortality and loss.

With the author's latest novel, ''The Chrysanthemum Palace,'' we are back in this familiar territory, but Mr. Wagner demonstrates -- as he did in his dazzling 2002 novel, ''I'll Let You Go'' -- that he can do the lyrical and tender with as much panache as the outrageous and corrosive. ''Chrysanthemum'' isn't a major work like that earlier novel -- it doesn't create a Wellesian family epic or aspire to give the reader a wide-angled, Dickensian look at the whole messy sprawl of Los Angeles -- but it showcases the author's kinder, gentler side while attesting to his ever wicked eye for hypocrisy and self-deception.

Certain elements of the story will remind the reader of ''I'll Let You Go'': once again the friendship of two guys and a girl provides an armature for the plot, and once again the relationship between fathers and sons, parents and children, is the motor that drives the book. In this case, the novel's narrator, an actor and would-be screenwriter named Bertie Krohn, is trying to come to grips with the fact that he still lives, on the brink of middle age, in his famous father's shadow. His father, Perry, is the sensationally rich creator of a ''Star Trek''-like series called ''Starwatch,'' which has run for eons on television; Bertie has a recurring role on the series as Will Karp, a randy, all-American pilot aboard the good starship.

Bertie's friend Thad Michelet has an even bigger Oedipal cross to bear. Thad's father is the literary lion Jack Michelet, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and perennial Nobel contender -- a novelist with Hemingway's lifestyle, Nabokov's highbrow credentials and Picasso's penchant for domestic cruelty. Thad not only harbors unfulfilled literary ambitions himself but is also haunted by the knowledge that his dead twin, Jeremy, was always the one favored by their dad.

As for Clea, the third leg of their trio -- she is Thad's current girlfriend, and one of Bertie's former flames -- she, too, dwells under a parental penumbra. Her mother, Roos Chandler, Mr. Wagner writes, was a ''deathless American icon,'' the ''self-anointed film noir nom de cin?' and Clea has followed her into show business, haunted by Roos's still heralded feat of winning three consecutive Academy Awards. Clea is currently employed on ''Starwatch'' as well, playing the role of ''Genius Alien Mechanic With Dangerous Sexual Undertow.''

When they were children, Bertie recalls, being known as the offspring of celebrities ''was a boon,'' conferring all sorts of ''seigneurial perks,'' but even then, he says, he and Clea seemed to know instinctively that ''such status put us at a terrifying disadvantage in the long term'' -- ''we seemed darkly, precociously in possession of the secret knowledge that, like hemophiliacs, we would eventually pay an awful price.'' It never seems to occur to Bertie that he and his friends might reinvent or surpass their parents' achievements; the potent examples of John Huston (father: Walter Huston), Jean Renoir (father: Pierre-Auguste Renoir), Martin Amis (father: Kingsley Amis) and Norah Jones (father: Ravi Shankar) elude them.

But if Mr. Wagner's generalizations about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, are less than convincing, his portrayals of Bertie, Clea and Thad's day-to-day struggles to come to terms with their families' complicated legacies remain deeply felt and meticulously drawn. He is pitch perfect when it comes to capturing the patronizing remarks dispensed by strangers who feel free to approach the three and discourse upon their parents' lives and careers, and he is equally adept at capturing their own messy stew of emotions -- from insecurity to resentment to defiance.

Almost all the people in this novel speak in the knowing, campy, self-conscious language of Hollywood -- banter that is partly a self-protective mechanism, partly a self-dramatizing display of cynical wit. They manage to name-drop artists like Beckett and I.B. Singer while trying to rationalize a decision to do a commercial blockbuster instead of a small independent film, and they merchandize their innermost secrets while bemoaning the ways in which show business commodifies everything sacred.

In fact, Bertie, Clea and Thad all concoct semi-autobiographical projects that they hope will boost them out of their current creative and psychological ruts. Bertie is developing a spec series for HBO with the Aaron Spelling-type name of ''Holmby Hills.'' Clea is planning to pitch a Larry Davidesque sitcom about ''the almost-famous kids of famous parents,'' starring -- yes! -- Clea and Thad. And Thad is contemplating a one-man show (to be directed, he hopes, by Mike Nichols) that would tell the story of his own life, including ''his revenant twin, Zeus-like dad and ice queen mom -- the whole shebang.''From the start of the novel, a nimbus of doom hangs over the romance of Clea and Thad, and sure enough, they ride off into the sunset together, like a slacker version of Bonnie and Clyde or Sid and Nancy. Mr. Wagner could have been a lot more subtle about his story's outcome, and he could have refrained from telegraphing the novel's ending to the reader from the start. Still, this novel ratifies the achievement of ''I'll Let You Go,'' albeit in a minor key, demonstrating once again that Mr. Wagner is as gifted at making us care about his characters as making us laugh at their exploits and self-delusions.